832633 - Silent Flash crash

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(External Software Affecting Firefox Graveyard :: Flash (Adobe), defect)

Description

[Daniel]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:18.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/18.0
Build ID: 20130116073211

Steps to reproduce:

Flash player crashes after I play Facebook games for a long time. This problem exists at least for half a year. Sometimes there was a link to report a crash, but now usually this is a silent crash - everything in Flash area disappears and is replaced by crash icon only (exclamation mark in circle). There are no links to report crash or refresh page. As I checked, plugin container process is still running. When I kill it, the refresh link appears.

It seems that it is somehow related to downloading or uploading things - game usually crashes when it tries to download some graphics, or send something back to server. Additionally I noticed that before actual crash game slowdowns. I suspect that some resources are allocated but not released later - this may explain both slowdown (Flash has to track all of them) and crash (out of resources).

This happened most often and fastest when I played The Ville, but not only - other games also crashes after some longer time.

This crash happened for me today too. Please tell someone who has access to debug version of Flash to debug this - half a year is a very long time, and it was enough time to fix this.

File: NPSWF32_11_5_502_146.dll
Version: 11.5.502.146
Shockwave Flash 11.5 r502

Firefox 18.0.1
Windows 7 Pro SP1 x64
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:18.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/18.0


Actual results:

Flash silently crashes - there are no links to report a crash or refresh page, just the "flash crashed" icon (an exclamation mark in circle). When I kill the plugin container process, refresh link appears.


Expected results:

No crash.

Comment 1

[Scoobidiver (away)]

Are sure there's no crash ID in the about:crashes page?

This is likely caused by the Firefox protected mode implemented in Flash 11.3 the first time. When a program or extension attempts to intercept connections between Flash and Firefox or if the graphics drivers are too slow to respond, Flash crashes to prevent any data from being stolen.

You should first update your graphics drivers: https://support.mozilla.org/kb/upgrade-graphics-drivers-use-hardware-acceleration
If it's not enough, you should find a possible extension using the safe mode (see https://support.mozilla.org/kb/troubleshoot-firefox-issues-using-safe-mode) or a program such as security software (anti-virus, firewall...) slowing down the Flash/Firefox connection.

Comment 2

[Daniel]

I updated my graphics driver (just to be sure, previously I updated it few months ago), switched to safe mode and started visiting friend's houses in The Ville. Finally I got three crashes:

1st crash: Flash first hanged, then (after about minute) crashed. As I checked in task manager, Flash plugin has allocated about 1.3GB ram (there was still few GB more free). https://crash-stats.mozilla.com/report/index/bp-1c471743-7cdb-4fcb-bd32-fe4db2130119

2nd crash: Flash also first hanged then crashed. This time I had to visit more friends, flash also used more memory (about 1.6GB). I suspect that browser cache migth be responsible for this increase. As I checked the crash report, call stack and Processor Notes are different this time, but general signature is the same: https://crash-stats.mozilla.com/report/index/7db92ba3-9982-4b8d-9c33-f4c372130119

3rd crash: had to visit even more frineds, and flash used more memory - 1.7GB. This time I got that silent crash - just the exclamation mark in circle. However I did not close or refresh the tab, but left it. After I returned after some time (I went to eat something), flash finally crashed and report was ready to be sent. I haven't analyzed it it details, but it seems to be the same as from 2nd crash: https://crash-stats.mozilla.com/report/index/ae36f0b2-4d6f-4e26-af96-91b722130119

Comment 3

[Scoobidiver (away)]

Try also with a new profile to be sure it's not caused by your settings (see https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-and-remove-firefox-profiles).

Check also for malware:
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/troubleshoot-firefox-issues-caused-malware

Comment 4

[Daniel]

I scanned my system using Kaspersky Pure, Spybot Search & Destroy and Malwarebytes Anti-Malware Free - all of them found nothing.

Then I created new profile, switched FF to safe mode (just to be sure) and suspended Kaspersky (yesterday it was active). After this I started playing The Ville, and this time Flash also crashed. Memory allocated by it just before crash was about 1.7GB. https://crash-stats.mozilla.com/report/index/98408f7c-c3f7-4d17-b4c0-dda262130120

All these crashes happened when I traveled to another house in game, or just after arrival, when game still loaded missing objects. Therefore I suspect that this is somehow connected to download/upload when flash has allocated a lot of memory (or other resources).

BTW, I recalled that in the past I played games with BOINC running some calculation-intensive projects on my GPU. Of course games worked slower and less smooth than usual, but I did not noticed that crashes happened much faster - my impression was that they happened as usual.

Comment 5

[Scoobidiver (away)]

Make sure also that Flash HW acceleration is enabled: Right-click any Flash content > Settings.
CPU intensive phases in Flash games may cause the Firefox/Flash connection to slow down that makes the Flash sandbox crash Firefox.

As a workaround, you can disable the Flash sandbox:
http://forums.adobe.com/thread/1018071?tstart=0 (Last resort section)

Comment 6

[candaules]

https://crash-stats.mozilla.com/report/index/33595682-9e81-427b-855d-87d132131221

Comment 7

[banakon]

https://crash-stats.mozilla.com/report/index/f582b71a-7c39-4adb-b4b2-3b3342131227

Comment 8

[banakon]

https://crash-stats.mozilla.com/report/index/ad6c6b5e-facf-4eb0-bc0f-4156e2140121

Comment 9

[Tobias B. Besemer [:BesTo] (QA)]

This is now a two year old bug.
The FF Version is outdated and the Flashplayer Version is also outdated ...
So I close the bug as RESOLVED/WONTFIX.
If the problem still persist, please reopen the bug.

There is also a other bug that can be interesting/monitored:
Bug 789379 - Generic hang tracking: Flash hangs in/under F_1152915508 without specific steps to reproduce
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=789379

And for Facebook this one:
Bug 779830 - [adbe 3328396] Flashcrashes on facebook
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=779830

Comment 10

[BMO Automation]

Version and milestone values are being reset to defaults as part of product refactoring.